Calypso Research Paper

As we learned trinidad tobago are two islands, Trinidad being the larger its about 50 miles by 30 and Tobago 25 miles by 8 miles. A popular type of music in Trinidad is calypso. The lyrics of the music have no preparation, thelyrics are performed spontaneously on tropical and broadly humorous subject matters. The music begins with a small dance then a male vocalist who speaks as much as he sings. The music consist of a conga, which is a tall barrel shaped single headed drum that is used throughout latin American music and also a violin, guitar, piano, and electric bass. The calypso song “Money is king” is considered a classic. The lines of the song are not consistent in time or in a rhyme pattern and does not correlate with the music. The song is similar to reggae. They both express problems in their communities, but also doesn't present an “angry” manner. Calypso in the past and even until this day is being blended with other types of music, such as rock, jazz, soul, and reggae. Since Calypso is only performed during the carnival period, the artist are unlikely to make a profit off the music in the rest of the year. This causes the artist to find other jobs throughout the rest of the year. …show more content…
These drums are multiple steel drums that are called pan. There are also different kinds of percussion such as maracas, which are small caribbean gourd rattles with interior beads. Some pitch ranges consist of multiple pan, because each bass pan creates only four pitches. As calypso music, the people even integrate it into their clothes. There are “panorama” competitions during the carnival where 12 bands compete with each other. Since 1940, when the steel drums began until this day the music has spread out to different parts of the